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John Broome: "Normativity in Reasoning"

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January 22, 2015

All Day

Location

347 University Hall (Philosophy Common Room)

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Abstract for "Normativity in Reasoning"

Sometimes at least, reasoning is 'active'; it is something we do. What makes this so is that in active reasoning we operate on our conscious attitudes, following a rule. We are guided by the rule. This suggests that we must, at least implicitly, have a belief with the normative content that we ought to follow the rule, or have a reason to follow it.

I shall argue this is not so: no belief with a normative content is necessarily involved in active reasoning.